About the author - english version

Peter Nissen is a Dane born in 1950. He started as a band leader in 1967 and made his living playing jazz music until 2007. His first instrument was a cornet, then he switched to the banjo and for the last thirty years played the drums. In 1973, he began bringing jazz veterans to Denmark. The first one was Kid Sheik Colar and later on came tours and recordings with Brother Cornbread, Wild Bill Davison, Milton Batiste, Tuba Fats, Jacques Gauthe, Shirley Alexander, Gregg Stafford, Wendell Eugene, Big Al Carson, Dwayne Burns, Fred Lonzo, and Sammy Rimmington among others.

Peter worked for many years off and on for The Danish National Broadcasting System (Danmarks Radio) writing and producing satire and making portraits of jazz greats as well.

Today Peter is a writer who has published Educational Material introducing children to Jazz (In Danish, Bibliotekscentralens Forlag) and in 2006 the highly acclaimed novel “Blues For Degas” (in Danish, Hovedland). Peter Nissen stopped as a bandleader seven years ago, but this year formed a new band – Buddy Boldens Buddies – with the ambition to play red hot jazz from the Bolden era, as well as lecturing about the early days of jazz and the enigmatic Buddy Bolden.

Jazz history has always been one of Peter’s main interests, and on his many travels to New Orleans he has interviewed several jazz veterans who knew about Buddy Bolden. This has given new insight and proven to be very helpful in writing his new book, where Buddy Bolden, Storyville, New Orleans Jazz around the turn of the last century, voodoo, Robert Charles, and the racial tensions of the area are strands which have been woven together.

The author with Milton Batiste trumpet player extraordinaire from The Olympia Brass Band.

The pivotal figure of the book is Buddy Bolden, but the narrator is Nora Bass, his common-law wife, whose life for some six years was tightly interwoven with his. She describes him as enigmatic – a unique musician, band leader, womanizer, family man, boozer, and indignant social activist. The book is fiction but, wherever possible, anchored in historical facts. Peter has used artistic license to fill holes here and there in order to create a compelling story.

The book on Buddy Bolden was published in 2014. After that Peter fulfilled a dream and started a carrier as a painter and didn’t play or write for a couple of years. He had several exhibitions, but unfortunately developed severe pain in his shoulder and had to stop. Three years ago Peter started to write down stories from his time as a musician and bandleader. Those stories showed to be popular and in his new book “In the footsteps of Louis Armstrong”, those stories are the backbone in Peter’s autobiography. The debt to Louis Armstrong comes to light many times in the book where Peter tells of many ups and downs, always with a smile. The book is right now only in Danish, but there are plans later on to publish an English version as an e-book.